People often talk about your marketing plan being a roadmap. But definition doesn’t really do it justice.

Because when you write your marketing plan, you’re doing far more than just creating a roadmap. You’re preparing for your journey from struggling start-up to business success. And that involves way more than just choosing a route.

There is a misguided search that almost everyone working in marketing around the world seems to be on. It involves seeking a golden example or case study that lays out perfectly how to achieve success with social media and be effective. In their minds, this case study would create the perfect argument for ROI, and offer a formula that could be duplicated by nearly any organization no matter their industry or audience or objectives.

Keeping track of what customers are saying about your brand or business online is now an essential part of running a small business.

Participating in discussions across forums, twitter and facebook helps you stay connected with customers and address any concerns or queries they have.

While this might seem like quite a daunting task, thankfully Google Alerts which is one tool which makes this job quite easy. Google Alerts is a service which provides email updates of new content that Google has found across the web.

Done! Google will now send you summaries of all online activity related to your brand. This can include forum posts, twitter updates, new sites linking to you and any other new content that mentions your brand name.